Drill Tests Nuclear-accident Plan

Drill Tests Nuclear-emergency Plan

April 26, 1992|By ANDREW JULIEN; Courant Staff Writer

This is just a drill.

Tom Mastrianna stayed calm when he got the bad news -- a nuclear accident had contaminated his head with radioactivity. A man in a blue jumpsuit pinned a red sticker on his jacket and off Mastrianna went to a decontamination station set up at Hartford's Brainard Airport. Mastrianna was told if the shampoo didn't work, he'd have to have his head shaved.

This is just a drill.

At about the same time Saturday, Gov. Lowell P. Weicker Jr. was declaring a state of emergency because something had gone wrong at the Connecticut Yankee nuclear power plant in the Haddam Neck section of Haddam. A faulty water pump and a cracked pipe had led to a release of radioactivity.

This is just a drill.

The wind was blowing west, so people in Middletown, Haddam, East Haddam, Durham, Killingworth, Madison and Middlefield were ordered to leave. Sirens sounded near the plant. At Bulkeley High School in Hartford, Red Cross volunteers waited patiently with coffee and sandwiches.

This was a drill -- not simply a test of the emergency broadcast system -- but a full-scale simulated nuclear disaster to see if towns around the plant, the state and Northeast Utilities are ready. Federal officials monitored the drill and will issue a report later this year. Federal authorities require such drills be held every two years.

The accident was simulated on a computer screen in Waterford. A busload of evacuees was ready to roll in Middletown. In Hartford, volunteers and city workers set up an intake station at Brainard Airport while officials from the state and Northeast Utilities set up a command post at the state armory.

The problem started about 8 a.m., when the operators at Connecticut Yankee shut down the plant after noticing that one of the systems designed to cool the plant's atomic core had sprung a leak. Through the morning, the problem worsened as the water level dropped to dangerous levels.

Because of the potential threat, the governor began ordering

people within a 10-mile radius of the plant -- in the direction the wind was blowing -- either to evacuate the area or seek shelter. In the state's emergency response plan, each town has a host community where residents are supposed to go.

As other systems failed at Connecticut Yankee, the problem got worse. The water dropped so low that the core's fuel rods were exposed, causing a release of radiation inside the plant's protective core. When another pipe cracked, some radiation was released into the environment -- prompting officials to declare the incident an "alpha" general emergency -- the most severe grade of accident.

At Brainard Airport in Hartford, workers from the city's fire, health and social services departments stood by to receive the evacuees. For Saturday's drill, the evacuees were a busload of about 25 volunteers from Middletown.

One-by-one they passed through a radiation detector set up in the National Guard hangar and were issued green stickers to show they were free of radiation. The first problem came when 2-year-old Kaila Krupke of Middletown proved too small for the machine and had to be checked with a hand-held radiation counter.

Most of the evacuees received green stickers, but a few were found to be contaminated and pretended to scrub down in bathrooms stocked with soap, shampoo and Ajax. Mastrianna, of Lyme, had to scrub twice, but got to keep his hair.

Then it was off to Bulkeley High School, where Red Cross volunteers were standing by with coffee and sandwiches. A few cots -- complete with pillows and blankets -- had been set up as well.

By 1:30 p.m., workers at the plant plugged the leak and the drill ended. Officials at Northeast Utilities said the sequence of events that led to Saturday's simulated disaster is highly unlikely.

"The potential of three, or four or five things all going wrong at the same time is almost too small to calculate," said Anthony J. Castagna, the company's manager of nuclear information